DoD Identifies US Service Member Killed In Somalia

The Department of Defense on Saturday identified the American service member killed during a June 8 mission in Somalia against terror group Al-Shabaab as 26-year-old Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Conrad of Chandler, Arizona

Conrad, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was killed by indirect enemy fire on June 8th when U.S. service members deployed alongside some 800 Somali and Kenyan troops southwest of Mogadishu came under small arms and mortar fire.

Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Conrad, 26, of Chandler, Arizona, died June 8, in Somalia of injuriessustained from enemy indirect fire. The incident is under investigation.Department of Defense photo

The attack came one week after the Pentagon killed 27 Al-Shabab fighters in a lone airstrike in northwest Somalia in what officials characterized to Task & Purpose as the deadliest single U.S. airstrike in the country to date.

Conrad belonged to the same Green Beret unit that lost four service members during the October 2017 ambush in Niger, after which U.S. Africa Command chief Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser pledged "increased the firepower ... increased ISR intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity ... [and] increased various response times."

GREENBELT, Md. (Reuters) - A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant accused of amassing a cache of weapons and plotting to attack Democratic politicians and journalists was ordered held for two weeks on Thursday while federal prosecutors consider charging him with more crimes.

Attorneys for the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America have filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump asking the court to recognize the citizenship of an Alabama woman who left the U.S. to join ISIS and allow she and her young son to return to the United States.

U.S. soldiers surveil the area during a combined joint patrol in Manbij, Syria, November 1, 2018. Picture taken November 1, 2018. (U.S. Army/Zoe Garbarino/Handout via Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will leave "a small peacekeeping group" of 200 American troops in Syria for a period of time after a U.S. pullout, the White House said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump pulled back from a complete withdrawal.

With a legal fight challenge mounting from state governments over the Trump administration's use of a national emergency to construct at the U.S.-Mexico border, the president has kicked his push for the barrier into high gear.

On Wednesday, President Trump tweeted a time-lapse video of wall construction in New Mexico; the next day, he proclaimed that "THE WALL IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW"

But there's a big problem: The footage, which was filmed more than five months ago on Sep. 18, 2018, isn't really new wall construction at all, and certainly not part of the ongoing construction of "the wall" that Trump has been haggling with Congress over.

A group comprised of former U.S. military veterans and security contractors who were detained in Haiti on weapons charges has been brought back to the United States and arrested upon landing, The Miami-Herald reported.

The men — five Americans, two Serbs, and one Haitian — were stopped at a Port-au-Prince police checkpoint on Sunday while riding in two vehicles without license plates, according to police. When questioned, the heavily-armed men allegedly told police they were on a "government mission" before being taken into custody.